Introduction

Welcome to dotTrace Help!

dotTrace is arguably the most convenient tool for .NET performance profiling.

dotTrace lets you find performance bottlenecks in a variety of .NET applications, including applications based on .NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, and Unity version of Mono.

For the information about dotTrace system requirements, refer to this page.

For the details on how to use dotTrace integrated into JetBrains Rider, refer to the JetBrains Rider documentation.

Supported operating systems and frameworks

	Windows	macOS \| Linux
.NET Framework 1.0 – 4.8	Available in: JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio, standalone, console tool Notes: You can attach only to .NET Framework 4.0 or later processes.
.NET Core 1.0 – 3.1	Available in: JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio, standalone, console tool Notes: You can attach only to .NET Core 3.0 or later processes.	Available in: JetBrains Rider, console tool Notes: Only Sampling and Tracing profiling types are supported. Because of some limitations of .NET Core, there may be some issues with profiling projects that target .NET Core 3.0 or earlier. In some cases, the profiled application may hang or crash. Projects targeting .NET Core 3.1 can be profiled without any issues. Attaching to running .NET Core processes (.NET Core 3.0 or later) is possible on Linux and not possible on macOS.
Mono 5.10 and later	Available in: JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio, standalone, console tool Notes: Only Timeline profiling type is supported.	Available in: JetBrains Rider, console tool Notes: Only 64-bit processes can be profiled. Attaching to running Mono processes is not possible. Only Timeline profiling type is supported.
Mono Unity 2018.3 and later	Available in: JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio, standalone, console tool Notes: Only Timeline profiling type is supported.	Available in: JetBrains Rider, console tool Notes: Only Timeline profiling type is supported. Attaching to running Unity processes is not possible.

Get started

If you are new to performance profiling or dotTrace, start with reading the Basic Concepts chapter.
For details on how to perform main profiling scenarios, refer to the How To chapter.
If you need more information on profiling process (running and configuring a profiling session, getting snapshots, and so on), start with the Running dotTrace chapter.
The details on performance snapshots analysis are covered in the Analyzing Performance Profiling Results chapter.
Since the version 6.0, dotTrace provides the completely new way of profiling applications - timeline profiling. This method allows you to collect temporal data about your application. This way of profiling is extremely helpful when you need to analyze UI freezes, sync delays, excessive garbage collections, file I/O, and other interval events. For details on how to analyze timeline profiling snapshots, refer to the Analyzing Timeline Profiling Results chapter.

Last modified: 06 August 2020